Mike's Minute: We're still talking about working from home

One of the "never the twain shall meet" moments that came out of Covid was working from home. 

Here we are, five years on, and the battle has not only not died, it's intensified. 

The big gab fest this week in Canberra had the unions asking for a four-day week. 

Victoria, run by communists, has already stated they will put it into law, even though they can't. 

Now the obligatory poll shows, guess what, huge numbers of people want the right in law to work from home. 

On the other side of the equation is the poor old businesses who are pulling their hair out. 

In places like the UK and America it's got a bit ugly with mandates and threats over returning to the office, or else you're out. 

The coalition in Australia in the recent campaign ran on a policy of banning work from home for public servants. It went down like a cup of cold sick and was, among other things like nuclear, seen as the reason they lost so badly. 

That’s the trouble with democracy, isn't it? What if the people are wrong? What if the collective doesn’t get it and doesn’t care? 

You could run a poll that says, "would you like the Government to pay for a family-sized chocolate bar and a French martini every Friday?” You'd get a good number. 

What we want and what makes sense don’t always align. 

"But I save time in the commute". Yes, you do and that’s good. Because you have to remember not all ideas are 100% bad or good, right or wrong. 

But on the whole working from home does not suit the employer as much as the employee. 

Are there exceptions? Of course. But exceptions are not the debate. The debate is the law, and the law applies to everyone. 

Making it worse is the people who make the laws are given their jobs by the people who do the polls. So, do you suck up to them and give them what they want, or do you do the right thing? 

Especially when, in this case, the right thing may not be the popular thing. 

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